How to talk to your family about your
apostasy

I have no intention of telling any family member about my
apostasy at the moment but there will come a time in my life
when I will have to. You state that your parents left Islam and
I am going to assume you influenced them to do so. However, you
also said in the forum that apostates should not tell their
parents about their apostasy because filial relationships are
more important. Aren’t you contradicting yourself here?

I am not trying to just point out what appear to me to be
fallacies in your writings. The reason I bring this up is because
I would like to convert my parents out of Islam. My parents are
good people, no doubt no different from yours. They raised me well
and quite frankly, I understood little about the sheer evil of
Islam until I moved to the west. (I was raised in a relatively
liberal Muslim country so I was shocked when I first learnt of
what you and others accused Muslims of doing. I thought you were
exaggerating a minority’s actions.) But how can I do it? I do not
know. I feel it is too late for them, that they should pass away
without knowing about the cancer that’s infected them. But even if
that’s the right thing to do, I am not prepared to remain silent
all my life to the public. I am very outspoken already although
posing as a liberal ‘moderate’ Muslim. And I want to roar out to
the world the truth when I am ready to. I don’t want to remain
silent for any reason.

I suppose I have two questions here:

Why would you consider trying to convert parents out of
Islam be a bad thing if you did it yourself?

How did you do it? How did you convert them out? I know it
sounds very simple to show some Quranic verses that preach evil
but we both know it is not sufficient for converting a Muslim
overnight.

You may wonder why I never mentioned my siblings. My siblings
are purely evil. They were brainwashed 100% by Islam. One of them
told me that another apostate relative must be killed because she
converted out of Islam decades ago. Objections of consciousness
did not work with him. To him, it’s what Islam says. Period. And I
could not object to that as a ‘pretend-Muslim’, of course. He was
brainwashed by radicals in one of the Islamic Du'a spreading
organisations.

Mind you, this is happening in the west too. Another relative
of mine was the sweetest person you’d ever meet. One year in a
university’s Islamic group here, and he turns into a monster. He
was probably depressed and lonely in a new world and hence was
fresh meat to those bastards. I see little hope in him now. He
knows right from wrong. He had no excuse. In fact, he used to
watch beheading videos from Iraq and simply say “It’s not about
emotions. We should follow Islam exactly, even if it’s against our
emotions.” In other words, he acknowledged the evil in it, but he
decided to consciously brainwash himself into sanctioning it in
the name of god. He’s married to a niqaabi who he treats like
dirt.

In any case, they will not be heartbroken for me if I leave
Islam like my parents would. They will just want to kill me with
little mercy. I don’t fear them. They will fear my brain.

Truth Seeker

Dear Truth Seeker:

No, there is no contradiction in what I said. I believe that
filial piety and family ties, particularly the marital
relationship are more important than making a public announcement
of apostasy and alienating our loved ones. If this could put our
lives in danger, then there is more reason to keep our mouths shut
and play kitman.

At first when I told my parents who were visiting me, my father
started crying and he said that he disowns me. Then I told him
that I was not being serious and that I will revert. The old man
hugged me and wanted to believe, but I don’t think he did. Since
then several years have passed and even though my parents live in
another country, we had a few chats every now and then when they
visited or over the phone. My mother in particular is a
freethinker on her own right. She read a couple of books I gave
her in Persian, including the 23 years of Ali Dashti. Those books
did it. Then I told them about FFI and they think that is great.
But this did not happen overnight. It took several years. One day
my mother called me on the phone and she was laughing her head
off. She said she was reading a book about the stupidities in the
Quran and she wanted to share them with me. I told her I know all
about them. Then she suggested all I have to do to defeat Islam is
to publish those passages and say nothing. Any sane person will
see this book is stupid. I told her that that is exactly what I do
and that there are even more stupid passages in the hadith that
she has not read.

This is what I would advise to everyone who has a believing
Muslim family: Go slow on them and be tactful. If you depend on
them financially, don’t say anything. If you are independent and
quite an adult and if you live in a non-Muslim country and you
know that you are safe, then you can be a bit more open. It all
depends on the relationship you have with your kin and each case
is different. Only you can judge when it is safe to break the
news.

As for your brothers, unfortunately they are brainwashed. As
long as they think that Islam is a religion from God, they will
not be unable to use their brains or think on their own. We saw he
same attitude in Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer. When cornered and
could not explain the errors and the violence of the Quran, all
they had to say was that, Islam is the true religion of God and if
I have a problem with that I must address that problem first.
However, when asked to give us evidence to this claim, they
started beating around the bushes and had no evidence.

This is the trap that all Muslims have fallen it. They have
come to believe that Muhammad was a prophet of God and after that
they stop thinking. They have surrendered their thoughts and
intelligence to him. That is why Islam cannot be reformed. We must
eradicate it. We must prove that Muhammad was a liar and we must
be very blunt about it.

If you are younger than your brothers and are still living with
your parents, of course it would be foolhardy to say anything to
anyone. Wait until you become independent and live on your own.
Then you can start by saying that many Muslims are leaving Islam
and the reason is that they think Muhammad was not a messenger of
God. Then give them the URL of fafithfreedom.org and tell them
that it would be good that they, who are much stronger Muslims
than you are, prove us wrong. Don’t tell them you are no longer a
believer. Instead tell them that the ex-Muslims are asking this
and that question and that you’d like to know what is the correct
Islamic answer. Don’t try to ask too many questions at once and
never get into argument with them. One question, every once in a
while, will have its effect. Eventually they will realize that
truly Islam has no answers and that they are simply fooling
themselves and are believing in a lie. Easy will do it. Give time
a chance.